Developer Endurance Land have received the go-ahead to retrofit and extend a 1990s office near London’s Old Street Junction. The updated 35-storey building on 99 City Road will serve as an innovation hub for tech clients as it provides 700,000 sq ft of workspace.

Putting a new spin on the outdated office, designers Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) plan to transform the existing building, upgrading how the building interacts with its neighbours and enhancing the sustainability of the building.

Jonathon Fletcher, a CEO from Endurance Land said: “The redevelopment will deliver a landmark, Net Zero scheme that’s tailored to Islington and Old Street, drastically improve the building’s sustainability credentials, offer generous community benefits, and unlock the potential of the site. It’s an incredible achievement to design a tower of this calibre. We are delighted to have been granted a resolution for planning approval.”

Redeveloping the tower building will improve the public realm by providing a generous new public square and widening pedestrian pinch points. Alongside the public benefit, the design puts a strong emphasis on sustainability credentials by targeting some of the highest industry standards for a tower development.

Elie Gamburg, a Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates Principal stated: “The design for 99 City Road transforms an unattractive building, and almost triples the public realm at a key London location. Our design’s innovative approach to ‘folding’ as a formal concept responds to the site’s diverse contexts at multiple scales, and elegant structural solutions achieve ambitious embodied carbon targets. A careful emphasis has been placed on detail and material craft to create a building that is sensitively-scaled with an appearance that changes with peoples viewing position.”

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